Forex earnings increase due to rise in tourist arrivals

Sai Nikesh | The Dollar Business The Indian Ministry of Tourism’s latest official release says that the Indian Tourism sector has witnessed a growth rate in January, 2015. According to the Ministry’s monthly estimates released on Tuesday, the Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTA) and Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEE) in terms of rupees, have increased to 4% over the corresponding year. According to statistics, FTAs, by accounting to a total of 7.90 lakh during January, 2015, over 7.59 lakh in the corresponding year, has achieved 4% growth rate. The FTAs during January 2013 were at 7.20 lakh in number. Coming to the FEE statistics, the FEE earnings during January, 2015 stood at 11,529 crore as compared to 11,082 crore in January 2014 and 10,785 crore in January 2013. With this rise, the FEE earnings in rupee terms registered a growth rate of 4% in January, 2015, over the corresponding year, which was 2.8% over its previous year. Whereas, in dollar terms, the growth rate in FEEs in January, 2015 was 3.8% over January, 2014, which witnessed a 10% negative growth over January 2013. The United States of America (16.35%) stood highest in the percentage share of FTAs during January, 2015, among the top 15 source countries. This was followed by United Kingdom (11.82%), Bangladesh (9.29%), Canada (4.70%), Australia (3.63%), Russian Federation (3.50%), France (3.16%), among others. The Union Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma, in his statement earlier in January, 2015, had said that the Government of India is aimed at attracting 10 million tourists in the near future. The Minister expressed satisfaction over the growing tourist arrivals to India after the implementation of Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) enabled Tourist-Visa-on-Arrival (TVoA) service. In this regard, the Indian government had also announced in the last month that it would extend the ETA-enabled-TVoA service to all the countries to boost the tourist arrivals. According to a region-wise positive outlook for 2015 (confirmed by UNWTO Confidence Index), the growth of tourism in 2015 is expected to be stronger in Asia (4%) & Pacific (4%), followed by Europe (above 3% to 4%), Africa (above 3% to 5%) and the Middle East (above 2% to 5%).  

This article was published on February 10, 2015.